The book I am currently reading

The Invented Part, by Rodrigo Fresán. A wonderfully inventive, intricate and entertaining novel on what it means to be a writer, and a reader.

The book that changed my life/the world

The Catechism of the Catholic Church. It had all the answers; it told you what simony is, and why you will go to hell for indulging in concupiscence. If only it were all true …

The book I wish I’d written

Samuel Beckett’s exquisite and deeply moving late text, Ill Seen Ill Said. But of course I couldn’t have written it, not in an eternity of Sundays.

The book that had the greatest influence on my writing

The Oxford English Dictionary. With Roget’s Thesaurus in a support role. The latter, by the way, for finding words I can’t bring to mind, not for learning fancy new ones.

The book I think is most under/overrated

Overrated books are too depressingly numerous to mention. Underrated? Nabokov’s The Defence. A sublime, funny and uncharacteristically tender novel about a chess genius who can’t manage the ordinary business of living.

The last book that made me cry/laugh

I take books too seriously to cry over them. The last one that made me laugh: was … well, again The Invented Part. Example: among a series of questions posed by a boy baffled at the world’s complexities: “Why is the Miss Universe contest always won by a woman from Planet Earth?”

The book I couldn’t finish

All the novels of Jane Austen.

The book I’m most ashamed not to have read

One of the novels of Jane Austen.

The book I most often give as a gift

I don’t give books as gifts. Let them go and buy them for themselves.

The book I’d most like to be remembered for

The next one.